Misrepresenting migrant violence

The way in which the Australian media reports on violence against migrant women reflects an insidious trend of focussing on cultural differences rather than the men who abuse them or the system that fails them, writes Joumanah El Matrah.

Last week, we read of the brutal murder of a young Afghani girl who refused to be coerced into sex work. Prior to that the nation was engrossed by the Taliban's gunning down of Malala Yousafzai, a young activist demanding the right to an education.

Preceding these stories, the Australian media covered a domestic homicide in the Indian community and variously attributed it to community secrecy, tradition of honour killings, sexism, the humiliating subjugation of women, and mental illness.

This reflects an insidious trend of focusing on migrant women's culture rather than the men who kill them or the system that fails them. Never in the reporting of violence against migrant women do we read that violence is always about the application of men's power over women, irrespective of the cultural context in which it occurs.

As the first two stories demonstrate, the violence is as spectacular as it is geographically distant. These stories are consistent with the type of reports we ordinarily read about non-Western women; beheadings, gang rapes, acid throwing, public executions and stonings are in the usual mix.

They allow us to believe that here in Australia we do not have a problem with violence against women, because we don't suffer from that type of 'spectacular' violence.

Feminists have long theorised that men's violence against women provides for a form of erotic entertainment; the crudest form being pornography. For migrant women, however, and especially Muslim women, it is the exotic nature of the crimes against them that provides for the entertainment; polygamy, child marriage, forced marriage, forced seclusion and veiling of women, and, of course, female genital mutilation.

Can you recall a news story on Muslim women that did not include one of these crimes?

These stories rise, provide their erotic hit and disappear again without any question of what we as a society should do to protect women. They provide for a type of dirty titillation in the sexually banal news cycle of the day.

The reporting of violence against migrant women, whether overseas or in Australia is often marred by an unspoken but deeply held belief that violence and oppression are core to minority migrant cultures. It is something they import with them when they migrate and it is their dirty little secret they keep as they settle into Australia.

The presumption is always that violent migrant men are empty vessels that simply act out the dictates of their culture while Anglo-Saxon Australian men who are guilty of violence do so out of an individual psychology. Western cultures do not have to explain nor apologise for their violent men, while other cultures face reproach in prostration.

Violence in migrant communities occurs for precisely the same reason it occurs in every culture around the world: it is the privilege, expression and application of power by men over women. It is only the cultural narrative used to normalise and justify violence that changes.

The racialised manner in which violence against migrant women is reported obscures the reality of migrant women's experience of violence in Australia and more importantly the ongoing apathy and failure at all levels of Australian governments to adopt a near adequate, much less ethical defendable stance on the safety and wellbeing of migrant women.

Research is definitive on this issue. Once victims of violence, migrant women find the system of seeking assistance and protection impenetrable. Neither state nor federal governments have policies on the protection of migrant women, or meaningful recognition of the fact that it is far more difficult for migrant women to find assistance.

In Victoria, there are no refuges specifically for migrant women and only one service across the entire state is funded with a focus on assisting women from different ethnic backgrounds escaping violence. The absurdity of this is made obvious when one considers that 20 per cent of Victorians speak a language other than English and Victorians hail from over 200 countries.

An Anglo-Saxon woman seeking assistance has an array of options available to her as to who and how she wants to be helped. Migrant women must have the same options made available to them. The failure to provide those options amounts to a form of systemic discrimination.

While the Baillieu Government is yet to demonstrate how it will protect migrant women, the Federal Government has repeatedly failed to recognise the vulnerability of migrant women. While funding for family violence has increased, funding for migrant communities to address issues of violence has diminished.

The Government's policy frameworks relating to women and violence either fail to acknowledge that migrant women actually exist in Australia or demonstrates a profoundly impoverished understanding of the challenges they face. This failure diminishes women's safety, and leaves many migrant and Muslim women to stay in abusive and violent relationships because they believe they have no other option. When it comes to migrant women and family violence, the Government needs both a policy framework and funding that specifically targets migrant women.

Migrant women are citizens and participants in this country, and they contribute to every sphere of Australian society. When their partners kill them, the focus should not be on their culture, but on whether we have provided the support and protection they deserved as citizens.

Joumanah El Matrah is the Executive Director of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights and has been working in the community welfare sector for 15 years. View her full profile here.